An arrangement of the foregoing type is disclosed in DE-OS No. 3247899. This prior art reference teaches that workpieces at one processing station are conveyed to another processing station or an inventory storage by way of an intermediate storage station. This avoids the necessity of storing workpieces in bulk material boxes, whereby the workpieces can become tilted in the loading process, so that damage to the workpieces and excessive noise can be avoided.
In practice, however, this arrangement has proven to be defective because the throughput of the corresponding piece count is less than optimum. Also in this prior art arrangement a change in the plane of workpiece storage is not possible.